Archive of Our Own

They never really talked about their Visions.

Or, to be specific, Kaveh didn’t ask about Alhaitham’s Vision. He hadn’t even realized he now had one, when they encountered each other again at Lambad’s after what felt like a lifetime. When he later spotted the glowing green symbol hanging so carelessly on Alhaitham’s cloak, which in turn hung carelessly on the coat-hanger by the door, he didn’t ask then either. He had wanted to. Something like, You would just toss the literal blessing of the gods around randomly, huh? Most people sleep with that in their bed, you know.

But he didn’t. Kaveh didn’t ask Alhaitham many questions in the first few weeks that he moved in, to be honest. Their interactions were kept strictly to curt, strained-polite questions about where this went or where that was. Kaveh learned Alhaitham’s schedule and did his best to be gone whenever he was home, telling himself this was the right thing to do – he was already burdening him with being in his house, he wouldn’t want to impose upon him too openly as well.

That Vision, though, sometimes blinked at him when he came home late from clients and meetings. From where it sat on Alhaitham’s cloak. That hung carelessly by the front door, while Alhaitham was elsewhere in the house or asleep in his bedroom, a hall and a living room away. It gave Kaveh pause, and an uncomfortable feeling. That it would be so…so cheerfully, obliviously far from its master. It, and all the protective powers it might have. All that it meant, symbolized, in its acquisition, whatever that might have been.

One night, it was too much. The client had been stubborn and petty, the other two projects had neared their completion only to hit a snag that Kaveh knew would cost them whole fucking months of delays all because those clients decided to ignore his recommendations for certain precautions because it was cheaper, and Lambad’s had to close for an emergency that deprived Kaveh of wine’s dubious embrace. So he came home, head aching, past midnight, miserably sober, and the Vision hanging on the coat rack blinked at him.

Something in Kaveh snapped, something petulant and selfish. He snatched it off the cloak it was attached to, then (quietly) stormed into Alhaitham’s room.

Only to be caught flat-footed as Alhaitham looked up at him from the bed, not asleep.

“You’re home late,” said the man, with an infuriatingly calm tone. “And judging from your expression, either you lost your wallet down a drain or those clients let you down in exactly the way you knew they would.”

Kaveh sucked in a breath. Then, in the first honest, real, all-him words he had said to Alhaitham since moving in, snapped, “What’s it to you?”

He stormed over to Alhaitham’s nightstand and not-quite-slammed the Vision down on it. “How could you be so irresponsible? This thing– Tighnari keeps his under his pillow! And you just– You–” Tongue-tied from exhaustion, Kaveh instead waved his hand wildly towards the hallway.

Alhaitham raised an eyebrow, then looked back down at the book in his hand, indifferent. “You told me Tighnari is a forest ranger. I don’t expect to have to get up in the middle of the night to answer some bumbling scholar’s cry for help.” A pause. Then he added, a touch acrid, “If senior is as fastidious with keeping his senses on his person as he’s currently scolding me for doing, you wouldn’t need to be here at all to cause a fuss.”

Kaveh stiffened. For a moment, a dangerous, dangerous moment, hurt warred with anger.

Eventually, anger won out. If only just. Face hot, Kaveh gritted out, “I don’t want to be here.”

Alhaitham shrugged a shoulder. “But here you are. And not in any hurry to leave, apparently. It’s past midnight.”

“Says the person up reading! In poor lighting!”

“I was going to go to bed, as soon as you stop shouting in my ear and let me finish this last chapter.”

Ooh, Kaveh wished he was hurt now. He’d take his punctured feelings over this rising urge to put his palm on Alhaitham’s head and shake shake shake him, like he used to do when they were young, when Alhaitham had just said something too out-of-pocket to someone undeserving.

He didn’t. Alhaitham was an adult now and so was he, and adults handled their differences with– with words. And– and grace. Or something.

Kaveh buried his hands in his hair, nearly shouted in exasperation, “You aggravating piece of fungus!” and then stormed out of the room.

He fumed all the way out of his day clothes and into his night shirt, and then climbed into bed, curled into his cheap threadbare blanket, and continued to steam some more. He wished he could dream, so maybe he could throttle Alhaitham in the sanctity of unreality. He didn’t, of course, being Sumerian and all.

In the morning, ice thoroughly broken, Kaveh made tea for both himself and Alhaitham like how he used to make it when they were studying for finals, and served it with a finger jabbed at Alhaitham’s face. “Your books are all over the place, disorganized, and a nuisance. You have three shelves and they’re all only filled a third of the way. Are you Haravatat or did you just make all your professors cry so they pass you to get you out of their hair, huh?!”

Alhaitham’s eyes flicked up briefly from his book before falling back onto the page. He sounded bored. “Your professor tried to steal your final project’s design. Should you really be talking about my professors?”

Kaveh could have coughed up blood from how annoyed he got. That, more than any amount of coffee or tea, roused him fully. Shaking his head and muttering about annoying juniors who used to be so cute but grew up so annoying, Kaveh made his ungraceful retreat out of the house.

His annoyance carried him through the three necessary meetings that way, and its lingering edge in his voice cowed all three clients into agreeing to his “recommendations”. The two stalled projects saw their delays cut down by half a month, and the last one finally stopped fussing and agreed to the final revision.

When Kaveh got home that night, Alhaitham’s cloak once again hung near the door – a taunting reminder of the enviable nine-to-fives he enjoyed as Scribe – but absent of its Vision.

As discreetly as possible, Kaveh glanced into Alhaitham’s room when he walked past, and saw its gentle green glow on his nightstand. Exactly where he had set it the night before, as though that ridiculous man had taken care to rest it the same way Kaveh delivered it to him.

Or he’d just not cared to bring it out of the house with him at all. It would be entirely like Alhaitham to think that his swordsmanship alone (though admittedly impressive) was worth any unlikely problem he would encounter during a workday. That sounded likely.

Sighing, Kaveh closed the door to his own room. Unbelievable, incorrigible, arrogant, insufferable, brat!

Naturally, Alhaitham’s conscientious action did not last long. Within the next few days, whenever Kaveh came home late and sober, he saw it hanging there again. Again! After his scolding. So naturally he took it to Alhaitham’s room and put it on the nightstand.

They talked, those nights, because what the hell, Kaveh had already wasted time and energy coming in here. First it was only traded barbs, but then Kaveh started letting things slip about his day that he didn’t mean to but he couldn’t help it, he liked to share. His clients, his projects – more his projects than clients, because Alhaitham never had anything nice to say about them but was far more engaging about Kaveh’s work.

Kaveh wasn’t dense, contrary to Alhaitham’s opinion of him or even Tighnari’s. At least, he was no denser than a coconut, and certainly had more emotional depth than the teaspoon his roommate had. By the fifth month and twentieth-something time he had to hand-deliver that Vision to Alhaitham after dark or on the weekend, as Kaveh unfolded a papyrus copy of an ancient temple’s wall-writing on Alhaitham’s bed so they could both pore over it, he had come to realize the Vision was bait.

Fish could be blamed for being stupid, if they bit the same hook twice. Their brains were very small, after all…also, they were fish. Kaveh had no such excuse.

He bit anyway. 

And he kept biting.

-

They learned the effect of each other’s Visions on the same trip, to the same unfortunate incident.

It went like this:

Senior Kaveh was accosted at the Akademiya by three shy but determined Kshahrewar juniors. The juniors looked up to him very much, and they wanted to ask him about this-and-that. Touched by their admiration of him, senior Kaveh of course earnestly and helpfully answered all their questions. And because he remembered how hungry his student days were sometimes, he magnanimously treated them at Pupsa Cafe, spending the money he had originally set aside for buying new hairclips.

After several hours of avid discussion, one of the students mentioned that they had all planned a trip into the desert. “Nothing beats laying eyes on the real thing, after all,” she had said with a faraway wistfulness in her eyes. “I want to see those temples, Senior. You’re right, only then can I really understand – as you say, a building is like any art and requires context.”

Kaveh, heart thundering from the sudden reminder of how his father had died in the desert, immediately volunteered to go with them.

As he was packing at home for the surprise trip that took place the very day after, Alhaitham peeked into his room and asked, “That job really paid so well that you’ve already found a place to move out?”

Too frazzled to realize the edge of tension in his roommate’s voice, Kaveh had snapped, “Yeah, yeah. I’ll be out of your hair soon enough. This is a work trip.”

Between picking out trousers and shirts, Kaveh told Alhaitham what had happened. Then, realizing that he had said too much, he tensed, frantically gathering his wits in preparation for Alhaitham’s scathing commentary about how he was too easily roped into endeavors that would waste his time without putting anything towards the nonexistent move-out fund he swore existed.

Instead, Alhaitham had said, “You don’t do well with heat. The last time you were in the desert, you nearly passed out.”

“That’s most people in the deserts, even Eremite tribes. Even the most well planned expeditions are dangerous,” Kaveh answered like it was obvious, because of course it was! “Not that it has anything to do with you.”

“Do any of these ‘juniors’ of yours have any experience with being in the desert?”

“No. That’s why I’m coming.”

“Did they at least hire a guide?”

Kaveh looked up at him. “Why do you care?” He was genuinely curious.

“So either you don’t know, or they didn’t,” Alhaitham said flatly. “Nor can you verify whether this guide is credible.”

Kaveh bristled, but he did not retort. “Of course they have a guide. Don’t you work at the Akademiya? You should know it’s mandatory for first-time field researchers to have a guide with them when they head out or the study wouldn’t be signed off on.”

“The Akademiya also doesn’t vet any of those guides. It’s a box on a form that most don’t look at before signing off.”

“Don’t you vet those forms?”

“The darshan’s sage does. All I do is file it. In fact, I don’t get to question it at all.”

Kaveh tried to ignore the growing, sinking feeling of dread. But he managed, “Well, good for those poor fools, since I’m coming along and I’ve been to the desert enough to be a guide myself.”

Alhaitham got off the doorframe and left. Kaveh went back to his packing, feeling uneasy…only to squawk indignantly when an empty rucksack was tossed down in front of him.

“I’m unaccustomed to short-noticed, ill-timed trips,” Alhaitham said with mock-plea, the kind that would’ve gotten anyone else slapped. “So I’d have to ask Senior’s guidance on what to bring with me to the desert.”

“We don’t need–” Kaveh began. Stopped. Looked at Alhaitham again, at his broad shoulders and the peek of one muscular arm, the intensity of his gaze and the set of his mouth. At the glowing Dendro Vision on the cloak he hadn’t yet taken off. Closed his mouth. 

He didn’t thank Alhaitham. But he did pack that rucksack for him, and stuffed his own with one or two books Kaveh knew Alhaitham would otherwise try to overpack into it. This was for all their sanity, Kaveh told himself. A bored Alhaitham was an easily irritated one, and Kaveh was already doing his juniors the disservice of Alhaitham’s presence. He couldn’t allow this– this stinging, educated, merciless mosquito suck the drive and ambition out of young and idealistic new scholars.

Thus had they set off, two adults and three “youngsters”, the latter nearly quaking in their fresh Akademiya robes when Alhaitham so much as glanced over them. Kaveh swallowed back the urge to apologize on his Alhaitham’s behalf at least five times in the first hour of their caravan ride, and then fell right back into that school-age habit anyway when Alhaitham started asking the guide and caravan driver snide questions.

He would maintain that it was Alhaitham’s suspicions and rudeness that caused the ambush to happen. Who knows, maybe the “guide” would have found a conscience somewhere between Sumeru City and Caravan Ribat and taken pity on the three rookies and a skinny guy who wore cheap jewelry. Maybe he would’ve signaled his much burlier friends to not jump the lot of them as soon as night fell and they made camp.

He wanted to say, “Alhaitham, what the hell did your mouth get us into!” when he woke up from a fitful sleep to feel cold steel held beneath his chin.

The students sniffled and shivered as they, tied up along with Kaveh, watched all their belongings be sifted through by the bandits. They could only look to their senior with terrified admiration as Kaveh kept calm throughout and, when one of the fools inadvertently picked up Mehrak, shouted to activate it and sent the whole lot flying with a great swing of the claymore stored within.

Alhaitham was completely absent, of course. He probably smelled the ambush miles away and had silently left the campsite as soon as they all “retired for the night”, probably shaking his head about their naivety as he absconded to plan his grand strategy for counterattack.

Kaveh didn’t know where he had gone, and didn’t have the mental capacity to worry about him when he was having to hold his ground against three battle-hardened bandits in the dark with his wrists and ankles stinging with rope burn.

He won, by the way! Not without getting a knee in his ribs and then a tackle that brought him and his attacker tumbling down the hill into a pond, but such was the risk of a brawl. It wasn’t his first sumpter ride, and all that. 

As Kaveh wrestled himself free of the bandit, sputtering and reaching blindly for Mehrak that should have followed him downhill, he looked up and saw the bastard already standing over him, sword raised high in the air. In the moonlight, for just a moment, the asshole bandit looked like furious death incarnate.

Then Alhaitham had flown in from somewhere, plunged down, and in a flash of Dendro and unfairly beautiful, elegant dual-scimitars and flashing sharp glass-arcs, cut him down.

“Who taught you how to fight? They scammed you,” said Alhaitham, as Kaveh gaped up at him now, at his absurdly artful silhouette and the quarter-halo of gleaming green Dendro shards behind him.

“Oh shut up. Go get the kids. I don’t think this is all of them–” Something moved out of the corner of his eye. Without thinking, Kaveh leapt forward and pushed Alhaitham out of the way. “Look out!”

A much duller, much fouler sphere of alchemized Dendro slammed into Kaveh’s chest, right where the goddamn knee had been before. He couldn’t even cry out as the wind left his lungs in a painful wheeze, but he definitely felt the almighty sharp pains of cracked ribs. He fell back on his ass, stars dancing in his vision.

Only to realize that it wasn't actually stars. All around him, myriads of Dendro cores had formed, their gleaming green glow almost perversely soothing for what they were.

Oh, Kaveh thought. He was going to die.

Alhaitham was a shadow of green and black, lunging for him. Kaveh swung his hand even as the movement made his entire body scream in agony, and Mehrak – who had finally floated down from the campsite – flew past him to hit Alhaitham in the chest and shove him away. From the cores seconds from exploding.

Then they did. All of them.

Someone roared. Not Kaveh. Or maybe it was Kaveh – his blood, in his ears, roaring. Or maybe the cores themselves, in their brilliant, night-piercing flash of verdure.

The pain in Kaveh’s chest disappeared. The aches in his limbs, the sting of his cuts, vanished. 

In the next second he was…floating? He looked up, dazed, into frenzied green-fire eyes. Their gaze only lasted a second – there was a curse in the dark, and both Alhaitham and Kaveh remembered there was still an enemy standing.

Alhaitham’s mirrors slashed through the air, a hexagonal box encircling them. There was a bloodcurling scream of agony. The sound of a body slumping. Then, silence.

Kaveh was stunned. He was still stunned when he was carried out of the pond, in Alhaitham’s arms, and set down carefully on the damp grass nearby. “You killed him,” he whispered.

“Where are you hurt?” Alhaitham asked tersely. Anger wound his words tight, sharp as his glass shards. His hands flew over Kaveh’s body, using a mirror to search for wounds.

But there were none. Kaveh’s white blouse was bloodied, his trousers stained dark with more blood, he was barefoot, but there were… there were no wounds. Not even bruises, or scrapes. It was as though Kaveh hadn’t stumbled down the hill and hadn’t gotten his ribs all broken less than a minute ago.

Alhaitham looked at him. He looked at Alhaitham. Their expressions mirrored each other’s disbelief. 

Then Kaveh said, “The juniors. Go!”

For a moment, Alhaitham seemed like he wasn’t going to budge. But Kaveh shoved at his shoulder urgently, and at the same time Mehrak flew by, beeping. Shaking himself, Alhaitham gripped Kaveh’s shoulder with a hand that carried a slight tremor. “Stay here, and do not get into any more trouble,” he said sharply, then vanished in a whoosh of Dendro.

In the end, somehow, they didn’t actually lose anything. Six attackers, including their hoax of a guide, were handily dispatched. Apparently one of the juniors was a quick thinker and cut herself free with a knife she had hidden in her sleeve, and even an experienced, cutthroat bandit was no match against three very angry eighteen-year-olds. It was the guide, too.

Kaveh clapped the girl on the back while she bawled into her sleeves, his words of comfort barely audible over her sobbing. Her fellows, under Alhaitham’s furious if efficient orders, cleaned up the campsite and sent up a colored Anemo flair.

A patrol from a nearby settlement happened upon them not fifteen minutes later. The lead guard glanced over their sorry states, sighed, and loaded them all up to be brought back to the outpost. 

She forced Kaveh into an infirmary bed the moment they arrived despite his protests, saying bluntly, “You look like my daughter after she fell into a vat of red dye. You stay here until the healer clears you, and if you don’t listen, I will file a formal complaint against the Akademiya.”

“I’ll expedite the complaint,” Alhaitham said from behind her, the traitor. He stood with arms crossed, looking unfairly unruffled for having, you know, possibly killed a man. Even if the man in question would probably have maimed or even killed Kaveh had it not for literal divine intervention via what Kaveh could only believe was his Vision’s power.

Kaveh glowered at him, but couldn’t muster up a response over his guilt and weariness. He made sure to sulk visibly while he changed and was looked over, instead, which Alhaitham endured in unsatisfying frosty silence because for some reason, Alhaitham also refused to leave while the healer worked on Kaveh.

The old lady confirmed what they both had already – Kaveh was not hurt! Nearly at all. She gave him an odd look as she cleaned away his bloodied clothes, and once she was gone, Kaveh immediately tried to get up.

Alhaitham’s firm hand landed on his shoulder, pushing him down. “Not only will I expedite the guard’s complaint about you, I will corroborate it. You’ll never get funding again for any of your out-of-city projects for at least six months,” he said ruthlessly.

Kaveh gaped at him. “What the hell are you on about?! Look at me! Or did you deafen yourself when the old lady was here – I’m not hurt!” He yanked up the sleeve of his borrowed linen shirt, showing off nothing but years-old scars.

Alhaitham simply looked at him. Then he said, “You didn’t know what was going to happen. You didn’t know the Dendro cores weren’t going to hurt you.” It was not a question.

Kaveh opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

“I can teleport,” Alhaitham said, his volume staying the same yet somehow, impressively, anger crescendoing with every word. “I could have gotten you out of there. Instead you ordered your machine to get in my way.”

Mehrak, who had stayed quiet until now, beeped. It sounded almost defensive.

“Don’t take it to heart, Mehrak. He’s mean when he doesn't get his way,” Kaveh soothed.

“Do you know how much damage Dendro cores can do? Especially at that range, and with so many of them?”

Kaveh glared at Alhaitham, who met his gaze with equal fury. “Yes I know, Alhaitham. I have a Dendro Vision.”

“But somehow not what it does,” Alhaitham retorted, his words so clipped he might as well be spitting each of them. “You’re surpassing every expectation I have of your recklessness, senior. And that’s impressive, even for you.”

“Are you done?!”

They glowered at each other.

“Go check on the juniors,” Kaveh said eventually, trying to make it sound like an order. He was, after all, older. He didn’t do a very good job of it. “And for Archon’s sake don’t scare them any more with your attitude. I’m not hurt, you’re not hurt, they’re not hurt.”

Alhaitham seized Kaveh’s wrist and pulled up his sleeve himself. Looked, again, at the unmarred skin save for years-old scars from construction and scrapes already won.

He looked at it for a long moment, as though willing himself to see through some particularly clever illusion. Kaveh held still, stiffly, wondering if Alhaitham could sense his rabbiting pulse where his thumb pressed to Kaveh’s wrist.

Then, abruptly, Alhaitham let him go and got up. He didn’t quite storm out of the infirmary tent, but those in his way hastily parted all the same.

Sighing, Kaveh lay back down. He smiled weakly at Mehrak as it floated in front of him. “You did well,” he told it. “So, seems like it worked, huh? You didn’t even have to touch me. I can still channel Dendro into you. I knew that core I bought was worth it.”

Mehrak beeped and whirred, then flew out of sight. Presumably to set itself at the bed’s feet somewhere. Kaveh turned his head until he saw his own Vision laying securely on the small table next to him. Only then could he bear to close his eyes.

Alhaitham’s accusing eyes haunted him until his consciousness slipped away.

-

When they got back to Sumeru City, which took an impressively short time considering how long it had taken to get to the ambush, Alhaitham split from the group and stalked off towards the Akademiya. Kaveh hastily bade goodbyes to the still-shaken juniors and ran after him.

“You’re not actually filing the complaint against me, are you?!” Kaveh grabbed Alhaitham’s shoulder, ignored how his slender fingers couldn’t quite fit around that bicep, and pulled him back. “How is it my fault that we got a bad guide?”

“It wasn’t your fault, it’s theirs,” Alhaitham glanced over his shoulder at the direction Kaveh came from, and where the juniors had scattered.

Kaveh stared at him. “Are you out of your mind? It was their first time planning a trip away from the city, let alone the desert. How were they supposed to know whether they hired a fake or not?”

“Did you hire a fake when you left for the desert for the first time?”

“...No. But I had experience before that already. My father–” Kaveh exhaled shakily. This was still a wound he could not yet verbalize.

The tension around Alhaitham’s eyes eased a fraction. “Right. I didn’t either, because I applied some modicum of common sense when I was doing so. One of your juniors told me that instead of going to any of the reputable guilds around the city, they wanted to save on money and just waved down whoever was going in that direction.”

Kaveh winced. That was the most common and easily avoidable mistake – and also one that had cost more than a few Akademiya students and tourists their entire belongings, if not their lives. Still, he tried to think of something to say in defense of the youngsters, who really were just youngsters, and we all had to start somewhere, right? Right.

“It works out then, doesn’t it,” Kaveh managed to say at last. “That I did come along. Who knows what would have happened if we weren’t there?”

Alhaitham said nothing. He just looked at Kaveh, expression frigid.

Awkwardly, Kaveh let go of him. “You can say whatever I want about me to the Akademiya,” he said, “but if you file a complaint against the students, they won’t be able to apply for any grants, trips, or even research proposals for months. Do you understand what that will do to them? And if any of their attendance is conditional on merits, or if they’re receiving funds to live here in Sumeru City, that will also be affected.”

“Things they should have thought of before they decided to skimp on the one person their survival depends on for their first trip out of the city,” Alhaitham retorted.

Kaveh threw his hands up, frustrated. “And they didn’t! We all make mistakes, alright? We’re not you, and thank the Archons for that, most days. I’m not saying you’re wrong–” He gritted his teeth. “But you’re not doing anyone any favor. They already got their consequences face-first. We were both there. We saw it. So why–”

Why are you being cruel? was what Kaveh wanted to say. He couldn’t bear to, for reasons unfathomable to him in that moment. Perhaps it was too close to what he wanted to spit at Alhaitham years and years ago, before he tore up their joint thesis in front of his eyes. If he said the words then, now, he might as well scream in pain and plead for mercy, and Kaveh’s pride wasn’t so weathered that he’d do that.

Not when they were in the middle of the street, too, with quite a few onlookers having slowed their pace or at least watching curiously.

Eventually, Alhaitham opened his mouth.

Kaveh’s hands flexed.

“Why did you not know what your own Vision do until that moment?”

That wasn’t the question Kaveh was expecting. It caught him off-kilter for a moment, but he had at least prepared the answer, he just needed to search for it. “Well, in case you haven’t noticed, Dendro cores explode and cause, you know, pain and suffering."

Alhaitham crossed his arms. “But not to you, apparently, which is fortunate because you were merrily squatted in the middle of about a dozen of them and knocked me away when I tried to get you out.” 

Every word was like a fishbone Kaveh had to swallow, but swallow them he did. He understood now, and guilt was starting to win out against indignation. It wasn’t the students Alhaitham was angry at. It was Kaveh. And…yeah, that wasn’t entirely undeserved. More importantly, if Kaveh could keep that anger on him, Alhaitham probably wouldn’t go after the poor idiots.

“My point is,” Kaveh said, unable to keep the annoyance out of his voice despite his best effort, “that I wasn’t sitting in the middle of a bunch of Dendro cores about to detonate until that point.”

“Then explain why you had Mehrak push me away.”

“Because you were launching face-first into the cores?”

“I can teleport–”

“Which you did not tell me at any point until after. The. Fact!” Kaveh jabbed his finger violently at Alhaitham’s chest, punctuating each word.

They glared at each other. Why was this becoming so common?

A few feet away, too young to know better, a child tugged on his sister’s skirt and wailed, “They fight like Papa and Mama!” 

Kaveh’s face turned red. Alhaitham’s head snapped away from the child’s direction so fast his neck cracked. Some few bystanders, unable to control themselves, chuckled.

This was the death blow to Kaveh’s composure. “You’re insufferable!” he snarled at Alhaitham, then stormed off.

-

Lambad filled Kaveh's first goblet of wine with a sort of sympathy in his eyes, and through the winding course of Kaveh's ranting about the impossible, rude, heartless piece of work who was now his roommate, continued to show this sympathy by always keeping that goblet topped up. Kaveh really liked that man. He didn't know what Sumeru would be like without him.

“And then– And then! A poor child had to relieve the trauma of their fighting parents when he looked at us!” Kaveh fumed. Realizing immediately that he accidentally put himself in the situation too, he added, “Alhaitham will say he doesn't ‘bother’ to put on an act, and then will perform the role of deadbeat patriarch so impressively Fontaine's operas would invite him to audition. I would know. My mother sent some of the scripts to me.”

Impressively, none of his words came out slurred. Kaveh's alcohol tolerance was legendary by this point. But he knew the drinks had nonetheless gotten to his head. He really was sitting here complaining loudly about that rude sprout-head like he was the one spurned. When it was Alhaitham who was in the wrong!

Groaning, Kaveh knocked back the last of his goblet and asked Lambad, “Can you put all that on his tab? I've seen his salary. He can take it.”

“Always, Kaveh,” the burly man answered kindly.

“I hope we're brothers in the next life, Lambad,” Kaveh said, solemn.

Unfortunately, because they had returned so early from the disastrous trip, it was still only the middle of the day. Kaveh got up from the bar, carefully made sure he could mostly still walk straight, then realized he had nowhere to go. Again. 

Well, he could go– to Alhaitham's house. There was a nonzero chance of the annoying owner being inside, but Alhaitham might also be too busy making life hell for the Kshahrewar juniors at the Akademiya's filing office. Kaveh could risk his odds. 

And then what, though? Shower? Get some sleep? Yes, Kaveh was desperate for a shower and didn't have enough mora on him right now to afford a decent inn room, but the thought of prolonging his presence in that space filled him with bitter dread and resentment. Not for the first time, he felt suffocated. Trapped. He had nowhere to go and nowhere pleasant to stay. 

The alcohol in his blood wasn't helping.

Kaveh ended up hauling himself up to the second floor and taking up the furthest corner possible from everyone else. He rested Mehrak on the table next to him and dug clumsily through his rucksack for something he could work on. Was reminded, again, of that terrifying aimless time so recently that he had been just like this.

Alhaitham being in the picture made it worse. Kaveh almost hated him. Almost. Not quite as much as he hated himself, however. He twirled his pen restlessly, sketchbook open but the page before him infuriatingly blank. In his mind, instead, he was drawing up the roadmap of disaster with the dreadful wisdom of hindsight. 

Alhaitham could blame the Kshahrewar juniors all he liked, Kaveh still bore much of the responsibility here. He was the oldest and most experienced, and he should've been the one to ask and counsel his juniors to not risk a reputable guide for cheap fare. He and Alhaitham should have talked to each other about their combat capabilities. It had been so long since they reached for their blades in each other's vicinity that Kaveh was foolish enough to think nothing had changed from the Alhaitham of the student days. They didn't, and then–

Kaveh hadn't asked the guards who escorted them to safety, when his group was making to leave for the city. Whether there had been a body. Whether Alhaitham had killed someone. The thought left him cold, not because Alhaitham might have killed somebody but because Kaveh knew Alhaitham did it to protect him. Very rarely did that annoying person lose his temper, but every time that he had…

Nausea churned. Kaveh gritted his teeth and pinched the bridge of his nose, willing it to go away. He couldn't even tell if it was wine or dread or guilt. His hearing felt muffled. Even the darkness behind his eyelids felt suffocating.

He didn't even realize someone had joined him at the table until something metallic was set upon it, clattering.

Kaveh opened his eyes, blearily blinking at–

Alhaitham.

Of course.

Between them, almost close enough to touch Kaveh's arm but not quite – like this was as far as Alhaitham dared to get – was a familiar key with a lionhead keychain attached.

“It got tangled with mine,” Alhaitham explained, voice carefully even, then got up and left.

Kaveh gaped after him. Then he snorted derisively. “Can't even stand to look at me, huh?” he muttered.

Alhaitham's steps paused for just a fraction of a second, but he never stopped. In but moments, he was out of sight, leaving Kaveh to wonder why someone with already long legs and ridiculous speed would have such powers as to teleport on top of it.

And why he didn't use it to just get away from Kaveh as fast as possible, when he was so clearly desperate to do just that.

Kaveh thought about it, then decided with a scowl Alhaitham must enjoy knowing he had to watch him go, to sink in the point. Or he was lazy. Probably both.

-

It was very late when Kaveh finally opened the door and stepped through.

Instantly, he saw the Vision hanging from Alhaitham's cloak where it was upon the coat-hanger. An open hand, silently offering. 

He sneered at it, taking his headache-fueled anger out on it instead of on its master, who was probably sensibly asleep by this point or should be. For the first time since…well, the first time since he started doing it (oh, words, how Kaveh was losing grip over them now), he walked past the damn thing.

Then he stopped.

Then he turned around, gently detached it, and went into Alhaitham's room.

He was awake. Typical. Reading one of the books Kaveh packed extra in his own things when they first left for the trip, which had been offered to Alhaitham like candy offered to a too-smart, too-mean, petulant child on the return trip to try and distract him from making the awful scary face. It hadn't worked then, but Kaveh supposed the brat finally decided to read it now, since he didn't have anyone else to be angry at.

“What did you do?” Kaveh asked him helplessly, setting the Vision down on its usual spot on the nightstand.

“I put in a recommendation for the Mahamata to more carefully vet the guides hired by Akademiya students in the future,” Alhaitham replied, eyes still on the page. “Or more accurately, I found a request submitted by another member for the same thing and pushed it through to the Sages. We have about an eighty-percent chance of rejection, since that would require the government to defer additional budget to what they will call an ‘elective concern’, but there is a twenty-percent chance enough of them will realize it's an investment worth considering.”

Kaveh stared at him expectantly. Finally, Alhaitham looked up, questioning.

“And that's all?” Kaveh asked. “You're never nice just because. What blackmail did you send to my juniors, eh? Did you sabotage Kshahrewar funding for the next quarter? Put down their names so their submissions will never make it into the Akasha system? Blacklist them from study-abroad sponsors?”

“Only you would consider endorsing measures critical to the safety of our scholars as being ‘nice just because’,” Alhaitham retorted, his words devoid of inflections in the way they only were when he was truly, deeply peeved. And Kaveh realized, oh, this guy was still mad.

Fine, whatever. Kaveh was also still mad. They could keep being mad together!

“And you just magically found this other person’s request for the same thing the moment you step foot into your fabled office and, what did you say,” Kaveh waved a hand, derision dripping from the gesture, “pushed it through to the Sages? Like you had clearance to their eyeballs this whole time but only just now decided to do something good about it? Something for people not you? What are you getting at?”

Alhaitham did not answer immediately. And that was how Kaveh knew, also immediately, that he had gone too far.

This plan of staying mad together wasn’t working out very well.

“I’m sorry,” he sighed after a moment of tense silence. “I’m turning into you, and that’s not right.”

“On the contrary, Senior should follow my example,” Alhaitham replied, mocking again, and looked back at his book. This rude brat – always so ready to forgive. “Then you might finally get a chance at that idyllic, leisurely life you keep dressing up for.”

Kaveh turned the other cheek, metaphorically. He sat down on Alhaitham’s bed and said over his shoulder, “If it were you in the middle of those Dendro cores, and you didn’t have teleport abilities, you would have shoved me away, too.”

“I would have gotten up and out of there,” Alhaitham replied. “It takes Dendro cores six seconds to explode without at least a modest application of Pyro or Electro.”

“My ribs were broken. I couldn’t even move, let alone stand. The only reason I knew what I was looking at was because they were right in my face and glowing.”

Silence reigned, heavy and suffocating.

“Then why did you command Mehrak–” Alhaitham began.

Kaveh threw up his hands, frustrated. “Because you were launching yourself at me, you idiot! Who the hell does that! See some bombs about to explode and put his face in it. A face that–” he jabbed his fingers at said face, “–your parents were probably very proud of.”

“I was told I look most like my grandmother, actually, who exclusively complimented me on my intellect,” Alhaitham replied.

“She must’ve been a very honest lady then, because clearly she didn’t say anything about your personality.”

The corners of Alhaitham’s lips curled – up. For all his so-called intellect and Haravatat education, Alhaitham had always found meaningless ribbing the most entertaining. Kaveh had gotten him to smile like this the very first time too, years and years ago, by reenacting an argument he had with a classmate. He had even gotten him to laugh, though that was much easier to do with the sapling than it was now with this grown, thick-barked tree.

For a moment Kaveh simply looked at him. At Alhaitham on the bed, ankles crossed and wearing nothing but a plain gray shirt that didn’t do enough to hide the musculature of his arms or the solidity of his frame. Even relaxed, lazy, Alhaitham retained his stature. 

Something twisted in Kaveh’s chest, bittersweet. He had missed so many of his best friend’s years. He had also missed so many of his own years, meaningful yet incomplete because someone was not in them, when they – he – should have been.

The realization came sudden, electrifying. That he didn’t want to miss any more. That he might not always want to go back to this house but he most certainly did not want to leave it. Not yet.

“I’m sorry,” Kaveh said eventually, because it was the best that he could say. The only thing. It sounded like it scraped blood coming out of his throat, but he meant it.

“Do you even know what you’re apologizing for?”

Kaveh shrugged. “Everything. There was a lot I could have done that could avoid most of that. You left in the middle of the night because you realized something was off, didn’t you?”

Alhaitham was silent for a moment, then said quietly, “I was trying to find the ambushers before they could attack the camp. I took down four with crossbows, but the other four had already rushed you.”

“...They only caught six. That’s eight total you’re talking about.”

No answer.

Kaveh remembered the archer who had sounded like he died to Alhaitham’s glowing Dendro mirrors by the pond. He also remembered that the guards’ announced headcount had only been at the campsite itself. Their leader had bustled him onto the wagon so fast Kaveh hadn’t had time to hear anything else, when they searched the perimeters.

Something like a shiver ran down his back. There was no way Kaveh could have handled four melee and also four others who could attack from range. At best he would have ended up knocked out, and at worst– Well, that already happened.

The Vision on the nightstand pulsed gently. Unthinking, Kaveh picked it up and held it in his palm. It was cool, the glass smooth, like leaves after rain.

“I hadn’t done much with my Vision after I discovered it,” he said eventually. “Which, I guess, is surprisingly fortunate considering how much I travel. I’ve been making modifications to Mehrak so that it can channel Dendro energy and imbue it into my claymore’s swings, but that’s about it.”

“I didn’t expect you to have a claymore,” Alhaitham replied. “You favored scimitars when we were younger. Every time we used the training grounds, those obnoxious female students showed up and cheered from the sidelines until you were too distracted. They gave me the inspiration for the earpieces with noise-blocking functions.”

“They were cheering for you, Haitham,” Kaveh huffed. “Only you would see others’ admiration and immediately devise ways to tune them out.”

“I was being sensible, considering you were very fast with those scimitars.”

“A claymore’s more useful for breaking rocks and dense debris. It’s very nice to not have to wait for an entire crew to arrive just so I can clear out a small part of a site and check for sinkholes.”

“You still move like you’re dancing.” Alhaitham’s eyes were back on Kaveh full-force, seeing him in the here-now and also elsewhere. The youth of years ago who grinned with all his teeth as he lunged at Alhaitham with twin scimitars flashing in his hands, elegant and deadly.

Kaveh would not know this, but Alhaitham spent many years poring over those movements. He had thought to ask him, but then Kaveh had left him behind with a joint thesis torn in half and a hurt so deep they both choked on the blood that welled up from their injury. Eventually, Alhaitham had scoured up damaged manuscripts that described something much the same, forgotten and perhaps meant to be, martial manuals inspired by the Goddess of Flowers. It seemed the murky lines of her old worshipers and priests had eventually wound its way to Kaveh’s inheritance.

And now he wielded a claymore. And Alhaitham, instead, danced through the air with twin swords imbued or forged of Dendro.

Perhaps it was better that they didn’t see each other fight, Alhaitham thought. There was no way to get the air out of his senior’s head if he did see and realize how drastically the years had changed his swordsmanship. In whose image he had changed it.

Although Kaveh was still the better dancer between the two of them. No matter how unwieldy the weapon or his partner, it seemed.

…He also still blushed with his entire face and shoulders and back, if the flush Alhaitham could see thanks to the generous back-cleavage of his blouse was anything to go by. "What are you looking at?" Kaveh demanded, not quite able to meet his gaze.

“It’s late,” Alhaitham said blandly. “Save the rest of your interrogations for tomorrow. I have to go to work, unlike someone.”

“I have to work too!” Kaveh snapped. “And being your own project manager requires much more discipline than a nine-to-five.”

“Oh? Then Senior really does need help.”

“You–!”

Kaveh stormed out of the room.

Then he stormed back in and put out the light even as Alhaitham was about to open his mouth to call the favor after him. With a final, imperious glare, he finally departed.

-

“He lets you touch his Vision?” 

Kaveh looked up to see that Madam Faruzan’s eyebrows had nearly reached her hairline. For a moment he wondered what exactly he had said, as he tended to ramble while prodding at delicate instruments, and the device she had asked his second opinion on was very delicate.

“Um. Who?” Kaveh asked after an uncomfortable pause.

“Alhaitham, who else,” Faruzan breathed. “He lets you touch his Vision?”

“If you mean he lets me take it off his cloak where he carelessly left it and bring it into his room like a servant, yes, I suppose he does,” Kaveh huffed.

“Kaveh. Kaveh, my dear junior.” 

Uh-oh, was the only thing Kaveh could think. Oh no. Oh dear.

Alas, Faruzan had latched onto him like a tiger with a rabbit in her maw. She clasped his shoulder and leaned closer, so close, and intoned in a most low, most grievous voice, “Kaveh, there are Vision holders who are married couples that don’t extend such a privilege to each other.”

“Alhaitham doesn’t care for common conventions,” Kaveh grumbled, though he was starting to feel a little uneasy. Come to think of it, the thought of his Vision being handled or even touched by someone else felt…strangely uncomfortable. Too personal. But– But– “He just cares about whatever’s easiest for him! Really, Faruzan!”

Faruzan gave him a look that reminded Kaveh painfully of Tighnari. The kind of look that said, Are you dense?

No, he wasn’t dense! Nor did this mean anything! No!

He came home that night, saw the Vision merrily winking at him from the discarded cloak, and brought it to Alhaitham’s room anyway.

If Kaveh was brave, he would have asked what he meant. Which was, What are we? But Kaveh was not brave, at least not that night, because he was sober, and so he asked, “Did you even eat something yet before rolling into bed like a caterpillar? You’re not an actual bookworm and can’t eat books to survive, you know.”

“So nice of Senior to ask,” said Alhaitham, eyes barely flickering over to the Vision deposited at its usual spot on his nightstand. “So…what’s for dinner?”

“You–!”

For a moment, Kaveh stood there and shook with the force of his irritation. Alhaitham lazily lifted his gaze from the riveting content of his book to look at him...and his expression seemed to, oddly enough, soften.

"Let's go to Lambad's," Alhaitham decided. "You always complain about doing the dishes after cooking, anyway, and I'd like to go to sleep without your voice ringing in my ears tonight."

Kaveh opened his mouth for a retort, yet could not form a sentence. Not because he had nothing to say, but he was so afraid that he'd lose his grip on himself and blurt that forbidding question.

What are we? What are we?

His awkward silence only served to make Alhaitham give him a one-over, eyes sharper. "...Is something wrong?"

"You."

Alhaitham lifted one eyebrow. "I disagree."

"It's facts."

"Present your case."

"No." Kaveh took a deep breath, finally and gratefully allowing his annoyance to push down the unruly desperation (hope) that had been choking him. He scoffed at himself, at the naivety. Did he really think this razor-sharp, consciously unkind person would give him any special treatment out of sentimentality? If Alhaitham did, it would have just been because he wanted to cut Kaveh a different way-

No. Even he knew this was not true, or fair, and then guilt swiftly embittered his internal ranting. Kaveh snatched the Vision off the nightstand right where he had just put it down, realized he did the damn Thing again, gods damn it, and tossed it at Alhaitham like it was a hot potato. "Why did you leave that thing out there when we were going to Lambad's anyway?"

"Because we are going to Lambad's anyway, in which case it's more convenient that it's already on my cloak and I just put it on. Your life would be far easier if you're better acquainted with this concept," answered Alhaitham as he caught the Vision, sounding much too pleased, because of course his linguistics-trained, unfair, genius brain caught all of the nuances in the 'we' and Kaveh's agreement to his suggestion.

He swung his legs out of bed and stood, and for a moment his and Kaveh's shoulders brushed.

Kaveh actually had to tilt his head back a little to look at him, now. The realization caught him by violent surprise, and Kaveh quickly lowered his chin and glared from under his lashes, instead.

But he didn't move away. Not immediately.

What are we?

"Kaveh?" Those eyes were too close. Shadowed by their proximity and Alhaitham's hair, they were almost soft, though still with that odd glow.

Kaveh swallowed. "I'm going to change first," he declared, and rushed out of the room like his life depended on it.

Because it did.

Alhaitham raised both eyebrows when Kaveh stepped out of the bathroom fifteen minutes later in the exact same blouse and trousers he had worn when he said he was going to go change. "Shut up," Kaveh said as his roommate opened his mouth, and lightly smacked his shoulder with an elbow as they put on their cloaks. "Don't complicate things, okay? I'm... I'm not..."

Not what? Kaveh couldn't quite craft the rest of the sentiment, only knew that it hurt. 

Something unnamable flickered across Alhaitham's otherwise impassive face. A brief narrowing of his eyes, before it smoothed out again into usual, infuriating mildness. "Are you sure you didn't already start drinking? You don't usually start experiencing degradation of fluency this early," he said, then added, "which means 'ability to use speech competently', by the way."

"Brat."

"You used that already."

Kaveh bared his teeth. 

Alhaitham strode ahead, leaving Kaveh to lock up after them because of course he did. He never waited for anyone, this man. It was people who waited on him, at any point in his life. He never did things carelessly or unintentionally, and that was why they fell apart to begin with. Because Kaveh knew that every word Alhaitham cut him with back then was what he believed, and said intentionally, and wouldn't take back. That was why they hurt as deeply as they did.

A few steps away, Alhaitham suddenly slowed, then stopped. Glanced over his shoulder, Dendro Vision glowing. "Coming?"

He didn't start moving again until Kaveh had caught up. 

Which was just...the other problem. 

What are we, indeed. But before that -- who are we, anymore?

Kaveh hadn't the courage to ask. He followed Alhaitham anyway, biting every bait set before him, and tried not to think too deeply about it.